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Comment by shubhamjain | Hacker News Reader

At first I thought Giphy might have been a UK company, but no. It's an American company founded in New York. Ignoring the merits of the judgement—ridiculous as they are—does no one sense terrible outreach in issuing a ruling on a merger about two companies which are in no way related to the country issuing it?

This has terrible repercussions for the American tech economy. Every big tech company would think twice before acquiring another company. What if years from now, EU rules that Adobe's acquisition of Figma was illegal and it should unwind it? Perhaps, this is one reason why Microsoft is choosing to home-grow clones of Notion[1] and Canva[2], instead of acquiring them. Maybe that's the path big tech would be forced to take from now on.

[1]: https://medium.com/geekculture/microsoft-loop-clones-notion-...

[2]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-announces-canva-comp...

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You do realize that the US applies that the same sort of regulatory business processes for overseas companies that wish to operate in the US.

In fact, the US "reach" into overseas trading including banking and other business processes is much more intrusive than any EU or non-US business regulation of US companies.

Exactly. People seem to be forgetting this most of all in this thread.

Though I can’t recall any specific times where the US blocked the acquisition/merger between two European countries.

Whoops. I mean European companies. (Reading it now the us most definitely meddles with whole countries)

World War 2 comes to mind

> Every big tech company would think twice before acquiring another company .

Great! As an American, I'm thrilled there are governments in the world that still place people & competition at a higher priority than Mark's wallet. My government has completely given up on the idea of anti-trust enforcement.

It’s a gif maker..fretting about anti-trust in this case seems a little bizarre to me.

195 countries in the world. I want to become president of one just to force FB to acquire Giphy again

Meta is getting creamed by TikTok and the market in general without the need for regulation by European bureaucrats that you haven’t elected democratically.

They could just as easy create regulations which are impossible for startups to follow that actually cement big tech into power unintentionally

If you want more enforcement, vote in government in your own country. At least we might be able to fix that later.

I feel so much better that China’s state sponsored social media platform is what constitutes “competition”. Clearly no regulation needed here.

Weird they aren't getting regulated....

If Meta wants to not be subject to UK or EU rules, they could certainly stop doing business there…

Personally, I'm really tired of seeing good products get subsumed into these faceless conglomerates, watered down, then finally borg'd into some tiny feature in the corner of the main app. Plenty of good ideas get tossed in the bin by these companies because they don't make 7-figure revenues out of the gate instead of being allowed to make something that makes self-sustaining revenue as its own business.

If businesses are looking for a buyout, I'd appreciate some up-front notice that I'll have to look for another solution once their dream is attained instead of being slapped in the face with a "hey, we got bought, but we're sticking around!" to "uh, we lied, it's going away; you have a week to save any data, hope you're not on vacation" a few months later.

> If businesses are looking for a buyout, I'd appreciate some up-front notice that I'll have to look for another solution once their dream is attained instead of being slapped in the face with a "hey, we got bought, but we're sticking around!" to "uh, we lied, it's going away; you have a week to save any data, hope you're not on vacation" a few months later.

Your upfront notice is not paying for the service.

If you use it for free, the chances of buyout are high and you'll get this issue. Companies that don't need the buyout don't ever have this issue.

Sure. If they want the free tier to be a taste, then build it that way (see `sr.ht` for a service I believe to be doing this well though I don't use it personally). If it is sold as a loss-leader to capture "growth", that just sounds like bad business planning to me.

FWIW, I pay for the services I highly value (news sites, media, email, etc.), but other times there's just a gap of "free and mostly suitable" to "expensive and overkill" that's too hard to justify knowing that my contributions aren't going to prevent the first bucket from overloading the boat at some point and leaving "everyone" out to sea in the process.

I'd much rather see "sorry, we can't maintain the status quo into the future; we'll grandfather the early believers in at their current level (or some X% over their current usage up to whatever cap existed) and the free tier now has Y% fewer features so that we can continue to maintain what we do into the future" instead of "we sold out to Meta" leaving even paying customers holding the sadness that entails.

I think by "big company" you probably mean those who do business in other countries. Doing business in other countries requires you to be subject to the decisions of they make if you want to do business there. I think if neither was doing business in the UK (I can only dream) there would be no case to answer.

So the repercussions are more competition and less large companies buying smaller companies and running them into the ground?

No, the repercussion is that a country other than America is deciding whether or not one American company is allowed to buy another American company.

Then replace America which the country name of your choosing.

These companies operate int he UK and in the EU. Naturally, they must follow local laws and abide to local rulings, otherwise they are not allowed to operate. This is nothing new. GDPR is mandatory to all American companies that want to operate in the EU as well. What's the confusion?

GDPR applies to the actions that companies can take in the EU and how they must interact with EU citizens. It does not apply to non-EU citizens.

This is the UK making decision of how Meta must act with respect to non-UK citizens and in areas other than the UK.

Did you know that American sanctions are applied even to non-American companies doing business with non-American companies?

> Every big tech company would think twice before acquiring another company.

I agree with your sentiment, but this seems like a good outcome.

I take it you've read the judgement in full and are familiar enough with EU competition laws to dismiss the evidentiary basis of the court's findings /s

This has no more repercussions for "American tech" than any other US company that has a business and tax presence in the EU. The EU has previously ordered Microsoft to sell Windows without Windows Media Player in EU markets. Yet Facebook still saw fit to open an office there.

> The EU has previously ordered Microsoft to sell Windows without Windows Media Player in EU markets. Yet Facebook still saw fit to open an office there.

There's a difference between a build tweak for another market, and a non-US country reaching into the US and blocking an acquisition of one US company by another.

then they are free not to operate in the UK.

You seem surprised that UK law holds in the UK.

> You seem surprised that UK law holds in the UK.

Then you've misunderstood.

I think the only one misunderstanding here is you.

Meta is operating in the UK. Just because it is an American company, they have a presence in the UK. The UK government is demanding they sell Giphy, they don't _HAVE_ to follow that demand, but they'll most likely be banned from operating in the UK, which to them is more valuable than keeping Giphy.

This is no different than a UK based company operating in the US and having the US tell them to sell a product they acquired similarly.

As a matter of fact, the US does this stuff all the time.

> I think the only one misunderstanding here is you.

You and I are talking. There's no "only one" as though there's a crowd of people present. Try and imagine you're not at the head of a baying mob.

I said that forcing a separate product to be sold in a territory by the rulers of that territory is very different to the rulers of a territory forcing the undoing of a merger in a totally different territory.

If you disagree, and think they're the same, then say why. If you don't disagree, then say that. Either way, please stop making points that I'm not even necessarily disagreeing with, but aren't relevant to what I'm saying?

Do you just like reading your own words, because that's a lot of words for yourself to keep saying "no that's not what I'm talking about" yet everyone who has come in has been on the same page, except you.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the three people who've said something along the same lines have also done it in a Dunning-Kruger-powered sardonic written tone.

> having the US tell them to sell a product they acquired similarly.

Has the US actually tried to block a corporate merger between two non-American companies before?

The UK doesn't want companies with excessive monopoly power operating in their country. What's difficult to understand about that?

Monopoly power over gifs

Unfortunately, for recent historical reasons this is nothing to do with the EU.

Because they operate in the UK. If they want to keep operating in the UK, they get to obey UK laws.

It's really pretty easy to understand.

There is no way in which this is "terrible outreach", it's literally "you want to operate in our market? obey our rules."

Should Meta refuse I imagine the UK would ban them from doing business in the UK.

I wonder if Meta just isn't interested in fighting any more because Giphy isn't that valuable to them. Gif mania has ebbed. The court ruling is giving them a pretense to cut their losses and save face.

does no one sense terrible outreach in issuing a ruling on a merger about two companies which are in no way related to the country issuing it

Its been a long time since the country of origin of an internet service like these mattered practically to the end-user, so no, no over-reach in that regard at all.

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